Mama Desai has touched down in India!!

I will be spending the last few weeks in this special journey here with my mom. She is supporting me in recovering my health and I am supporting her and her mission to begin philanthropic work in India.

After more than 30 years as a practicing physician in the US, she wants to give back in the country of her birth. Yesterday, we visited a wonderful organization called Door Step School. This organization helps poor children in Mumbai and Pune slums to go to school. I remember visiting their first school in a Mumbai slum when I was six. It was a make-shift room built of tin panels. Since that time they have blossomed to over 200 school sites and 500 staff under the leadership of the amazing, dynamic woman you can see her in the picture. She has so much energy!!

As we learned yesterday, their work is now focusing a lot more on serving the children of migrant workers. Migrant workers migrate for work and in many cases are construction workers. All throughout India there is a HUGE construction boom going on…malls, high-rise apartments, industrial parks, you name it. And most unfortunately the construction workers, or migrant workers (many of who are women), are very poorly paid, live in horrible conditions and migrate along with their children who will never have the opportunity to go to school because they go from construction site to construction site.

So Door-Step School has set up mobile bus schools to go to the construction sites teaching the children to read and write and then facilitates their enrollment in a proper school. They have had a lot of success and achieved a lot, and there is so much more to do, as always. What was so inspiring for me was to see the children, really so eager to learn and to see the most amazing passionate staff of mainly all women and to be here with my mom ♥. Jai MA!! http://www.doorstepschool.org/